If public space is the theater of human history, then as we stroll through the streets of Ermoupolis, we experience, however fleetingly, the miraculous chapter of the birth of modern Greece. Greatness may be long gone, but signs of it still exist, vivid enough to take you back to the 19th century and the fast pace of a prosperous, innovative maritime, commercial, industrial, and artistic state. And when Holy Week and Good Friday night roll around, this neoclassical open-air Aegean museum welcomes a mass gathering of people that is overwhelming, urban and theatrical in equal measure.

The three central parishes of the city, the parishes of the patron saint of St. Nicholas, the Assumption of the Virgin and the Transfiguration of the Savior, as they surround epitaphs in the alleys of the city they meet in the central square. Every aspect of the local culture declares the present in absolute formality and the utmost discipline, and they all resemble a grandiose public choreography culminating in the monumental steps of the iconic building, the City Hall, designed by Ernesto Ziller in 1876.

The Philharmonic, choirs, scouts, parishes and delegations are all here, in good shape. “This is an elaborate ceremony, carried out with great precision and formality,” says Irini Draku, education adviser for the municipality of Syros-Ermoupolis. “I would call it an ‘urban religious drama’. A drama with many first and second roles, of which I single out a coffin with epitaphs, everyone has a large cross hanging around their necks with a wide red ribbon, which was awarded to them by the despot. Indeed, looking at this elite, over the shirts of which hang nominal crosses, like medals of honor, it becomes quite clear how seriously they take their role and how proud they are of it. Winding among the neoclassical decoration of the streets of the Cycladic capital, the canopies of the epitaph painted with purple light, the imposing mansions of two hundred years ago seem around them not to be volumetric buildings, but to be the paper scenery of a giant open air. show.

On the afternoon of Good Friday at noon, an epitaph is also held in the cemetery of St. George, next to the graves of ordinary Syrians and the impressive mausoleums of famous families.

When the litany passes in front of the Ermoupolis Opera House, the Apollo Theatre, and soon the echo of the polyphonic choir of St. Nicholas is heard in the square, Italian arias and Byzantine psalms merge and unexpectedly merge, as this city of the East unexpectedly married the West. This marriage is also reflected in the fact that the Catholic community of the island (constituting about a third of the total population), despite all the problems and tensions of the past, harmoniously coexists with the Orthodox. As the secretary of the Orthodox metropolis of the island, Alexandros Markizos, tells us, the reform of 1965 helped a lot in this, when the Catholic Church decided, where there are Catholics living with the Orthodox, to celebrate Easter with them, without previous calendar differences. As for Good Friday and the Catholic epitaph, he reminds us of the following: “In the past, the Catholic epitaph was lit very early in the day, and not across the square. Now the litany is celebrated in the square and an hour before the arrival of the Orthodox epitaphs.”

When we learn that the Catholic epitaph (in the form of a canopy as we know it from the Orthodox Good Friday) is a Greek original, we understand that the country’s Catholic community is influenced in its rites by the Orthodox Church. What is certain is that when you look at the statue of Jesus inside the epitaph that wanders the alleys of Ano Sira, you see another, completely “Syrian” fusion of cultures.

However, over the past 20 years or so, another succession of epitaphs have taken place in Ermoupolis, set by the light of the sun. On the initiative of Metropolitan Dorotheos II of Syros, at noon on Good Friday, an epitaph was erected at the cemetery of St. George, where impressive marble mausoleums of noble families are located next to the graves of ordinary Syrians. in 1990 by the Ministry of Cultural and Historical Monuments.

As Aliki Leontaritis, Deputy Mayor for Culture of the Municipality of Syros-Ermoupolis, informs us, “In 2018, the Agios Georgios Cemetery joined the Association of Important Cemeteries of the Council of Europe (ASCE) and the procedures are currently being finalized to qualify for a place on the “European Cemetery Route”. Time has punished them with damage, but the Deputy Mayor informs us that it is expected that the tender documentation will be ready very soon, so that tender and finally restoration procedures can begin around the end of the year. These marble monuments of high art are in harmony with the city to which they belong, and are an open-air museum and a suitable place for the daytime procession of tombstones, which, “because it takes place next to the graves, in a place where we all have our people, it’s like talking to them. It’s a metaphysical experience that gets even creepier and weirder because it may be sunny but you’re grieving,” Irini Drakow tells us. Reminding us of the primordial origins of religious customs in nature and its cycles, he adds: “Such is Easter, there is always something paradoxically exciting about it. Maybe it’s because winter is leaving and spring is coming, because the days are getting longer and we’re coming out of the darkness.”